CHARLIE AND MURRAY

Annette Shurtliff and I became friends in a seventh grade art class, over the creation of a mural of animals wandering across the African veldt.

And we remained friends through junior high, high school, horses, going to different colleges, becoming members of the same church, living together, living apart, same college, marriage (different guys - sorry to break the pattern here), different states/continents, babies around the same time (she had one extra), husbands in radically different careers (teaching special-education kids vs. thinking like a terrorist... wait a minute, maybe they're more alike than I thought).

We became grayer, and heavier, a little slower.

But we both were madly in love with our dogs.

And unfortunate, both Annette and I very recently had to make the incredibly difficult decision to have our dogs put down rather than suffer.

Annette's daughter Mary Anne made a Facebook page for Charlie - I've written about Murray in here.

We'll see you guys in the next life for sure - if we reach that high.